Midwestchasers.com/Kurt Hulst

A few updates for this years season (2011).

1).When I am chasing this year I will be using ChasetTV to stream live weather video. You can view my live chase stream on my Live Stream link

2). I hope to be airing live video on Wood TV 8 here in Grand Rapids covering all of SW MI.

3).I added a Verizon USB760 broadband aircard to my arsenal of tech that I will be using this year to help get a good stream online.

4). I added a few lightning images to my banner logo and re-sized my whole site, both blog and main site, to 1000px wide to keep up with today’s higher resolutions. You may have to use the scroll bar for lower resolutions but this should fit most screens.

It has been a great period of time since I have posted anything on my blog or even looked at comments that had been left.  I want to thank everyone who has left comments in the last couple of months and especially to those who have commented on the June 5, Illinois event.

Life has been pretty busy as I have been working a new job for about 5 months now.  On top of that my wife and I have been raising our new baby boy who is a little over 3 months now.  There have been a lot of really good changes in our life but changes that have kept both my wife and I pretty busy.  I have not had much time to get out and chase since my son was born in September. Frankly there was not much to chase any way except a few hit and miss systems. Now we’re in to the full swing of winter. The only chasing I am able to do now is vicariously through the chase cases posted on stormtrack.org/forum.  However, I did capture a few anvil crawlers in mid November which I still have yet to process.

I have also found a new hobby that can keep me busy during the down time of storm chasing.  Espresso, mmmmm!!   I have been honing my skills on the espresso machine and becoming a home barista. I have found that fresh grinds with freshly roasted beans are the way to go. I am thankful for a few coffee roasters that are local in Grand Rapids. One in particular is Grand Rapids Coffee Roasters.  I bought a Saeco Aroma Espresso machine that was refurbished that does a fine job. Its not a top of  the line but its a good starter machine.  I also bought a new Ascaso i3-mini espresso grinder.  It does a really good job at getting the grind fine enough for espresso.  There are a lot of so called espresso grinders out there that just don’t cut it.

So all in all it has been a crazy busy couple of months but has been very beneficial. I gotta head to work in about a half hour so time to play with the young man.

I got a late start to this chase but it was okay as I intercepted the supercell just east of Allegan, MI.  Had some of  the best lightning I have been able to capture in years.  The second in the series of photos would have been the best shot of the night, but I had just dropped my f-stop back down to 6.7 because the bolts were still pretty distant.  Boom overexposure. Amazing lightning. the first three were taken one mile north of Hopkins. It started to rain so I dropped south to one mile south of  route 222.  Found a nice open spot overlooking a corn field.  This is where I was able to capture some more amazing lightning.  A local resident, Nick and his girlfriend, were out watching the storm as well.  It was nice to meet Nick and his girlfriend as we watched the supercell approach from our west.  The lightning was illuminating the supercell and the photos do not give it justice.  The supercell looked very classic and near the end transitioned into an HP. It had a very strong vertical stacked vault region and still amazing lightning.  Enjoy the images. All content is copy written.

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